Blood & Thunder
by Nethian
Summary: Expect updates every couple of days
1. Chapter 1

**Blood & Thunder**

Pieter stretched his back, grimacing as his aching muscles screamed at him in pain. He mopped his brow as he surveyed his work. The field he had been working on all day was plowed and ready to be sown with seed. He reckoned his work was worth at least a handful of copper coins. Looking at it now, he was proud of the neat columns of dirt.

He pet his hoe on his shoulder and began walking towards the village, eager for a tankard to make the pain in his back go away. His shoe less feet sent up motes of dust in the hot, windless air. The dust settled on the sack cloth pants that he wore that didn't fit him properly and therefore he tied them at the waist with a short length of rope. The sweat that had gathered on his body started to dry, adding to his already potent stench. But Pieter didn't notice it, no one in the village knew what pleasant smelled like, so they settled for the smell of work and more work and worse food.

He approached the back of the tavern where everyone gathered after the days work. As he passed the stables, the only donkey in them "ee-awed" at him. Pieter muttered something about it being a flea infested krut bag. As he said it his chest itched. He reached and scratched it, passing it off as mere coincidence.

The tavern was warm inside, but the warmth wasn't welcome so late in the summer. The air was stifling, and made him uncomfortable, especially after a hard days work.

Greg, the taverns bouncer sat at a table by himself. Pieter joined him, Greg nodded at him but continued to nurse his tankard.

Pieter called to the barkeep, "an ale please."

The barkeep grumbled to himself, "like we serve anything else."

The sun had set and most of the village was inside the tavern. The mass of smelling peasants made the room even hotter. But the people were in good spirits. There was singing now and again but was cut off when someone fell over in their drunken stupor. Pieter was red in the face, enjoying the ale a little more than he should.

His chest itched again in the same spot but ignored it. The room grew quiet then, as the beat of hooves on the dirt road came round the tavern. There was also the unmistakable clinking of heavy armor. The people waited inside the tavern, unused to the noises that were being made. Some wondered if they were under attack

Then the door was kicked open. A knight stepped through it and grimaced as a wave of hot smelly air hit him. He looked around at the people in contempt. He cleared his throat to speak in a commanding manner, "We knights of the Holy Hammer of Sigmar have been stationed in this area." He looked to see if he had commanded the attention of the room, and was pleased to fin he had done so. "There have been several reports of a tribe of beastmen roaming the nearby forest, and we are here for your safety, and that of the Empire. In this matter we expect full cooperation"

Pieter didn't like the way the knight talked, he sounded to _noble_. Ten more of them followed the man into the room. They forced some locals away from their table and bellowed for strong spirits. The serving made hurried to do so.

People were leaving now, unable to cope with the obnoxious intruders. Pieter stayed though, he earned his right to a drink. The maid brought the drinks to the knights, they all looked into their tankards. One of them braved a sip and immediately sprayed it across the room.

"What is this piss-water!" he boomed. The others tipped their tankards onto the floor, now screaming for food. Pieter was about to leave when he saw one of the knights grab the maid and force her onto his lap. He started tugging at her blouse.

Pieter had to do something. He walked to the table where they sat and scratched his chest, which was itching again. The knights ignored him, being entertained by the maid. He cleared his throat even louder this time. They turned to him, sneering.

"Why don't you let 'er be?" He dared ask. The knights looked at each other and started laughing uproariously.

The one nearest Pieter stood up and looked at him, then wrinkled his nose. "Go take a bath you filthy rat." He said right before he delivered a hard blow to Pieter's chin. He landed on the floor, out cold.

Pieter woke up in a puddle. It had started raining in the night and he could still hear the knights inside the tavern. He groaned as he realized that the field he had plowed was going to be ruined, then again because his chin hurt so badly. He forced himself up and looked around. Surprisingly he could see well in the darkness of the night.

Pieter mover quickly to his home. It wasn't far from the tavern. Just a few buildings down from it. He needed to get dry. It was slippery along the road and he fell a few times, but he got to his small hut and hurried inside.

The door wasn't locked, it didn't need to be. Pieter had nothing to steal. He began to take of his wet clothes. He fumbled around the knot of the rope at his waste. The he took off his shirt. He scratched his itching chest again. He looked down at it to see if he'd been bitten by a bug. His face paled as he saw the stigmata of chaos on his chest. Then he blacked out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter II**

Pieter's head thundered. The throbbing pain made his head spin, and his mouth was dry. He figured he was hungover. He swore to himself never to drink again.

Then his chest seared in pain. He remembered the stigmata on his chest and looked down. There it was, a wisp of smoke leading to a circle with a dot in the center of it and a curved spike at the end. His heart leaped. Hoof beats thundered nearby, coming closer to his hut. They passed and Pieter relaxed.

He threw on his shirt and went outside. A few of the knights had ridden past from the forest. One of them dumped a mutated body in the village square. It was somewhat shaped like a muscular man, save the horned head and the hooves. He nervously approached it. It's head was that of an elk, but it's hands were those of a man. It's eyes stared at him from deaths embrace, never to see again.

But the thing that caught Pieter's gaze was the mark on it's arm. The same mark that was emblazoned on his chest. Was this his fate? To become an animal like parody of man? He shuddered at the thought of being chased through the forest.

"Good start eh ratty?" Pieter hadn't noticed the knight walk to him. "Yeah, we'll kill the lot of 'em"

"Good," Said Pieter, lost in his own thoughts. He almost reached for his temple to check for horns.

"You work on the farms on the outskirts yeah?" The knight asked.

"Yeah, almost me hole life," said Pieter. "Why?"

"Well given the circumstances, we're ordering the people to stay in the town limits, it's not going to be enforced, but you probably don't want an arrow shaft in your neck."

"But the food?" Famines were not appreciated in the village and those responsible were usually run out of town.

"Rations will be brought from the Reik on a caravan." The knight stated.

Pieter looked around, he didn't know what to do. Ever since he was young, he'd work in the field and go home or the tavern. Now he was without work, and he had nothing to keep him busy. So naturally his thoughts went to the symbol on his chest. He started to shake, and the edge of his vision grew fuzzy.

The knight looked at him, "You all right boy?"

Pieter regained some composure. "I'm fine." He was able to mumble.

The knight tossed him a silver coin. "Here this'll hold you up until you can find a new job, or at least get you drunk enough to forget your troubles."

Pieter took the coin greedily. Then he managed to coax his legs into carrying him away. The tavern was closed so drinking himself dizzy wasn't an option at the moment. The rest of the village was really boring to him he realized. The tavern, his hut, and the fields were usually where he went. Now he wandered aimlessly looking to be entertained. Mainly he passed more huts and other small homes. He passed the granary and the mill but they held no interest to him.

Then something happened, Pieter's sight _shifted_. People walking by had slight fuzzy glows around their bodies. But it only happened for a split second before things went back to normal. The incident though, was enough to cause him to stop in the street and take a breathe. Some people paused to look at him and he realized how much attention he was drawing to himself..

He decided to duck inside the closest door and tried not to look like he was robbing a house. It turned out that the building was a store. An apothecary's store! But it was empty save a man sitting at the desk, his nose in a book. He hadn't even noticed Pieter, so Pieter took the chance to look around the room. It was dusty, smelled of mildew, and covered with stacks of books and jars containing plants or small animals. The man hadn't noticed him still, even though Pieter was standing in front of him.

The book the man was reading was large and written in a script Pieter had never seen before. Not that Pieter could read, but he still recognized Imperial script when he saw it. Then he saw something he did recognize on the page. A wisp of smoke leading to a circle with a smaller circle inside it ending in a curved spike. The man was reading a forbidden tome of chaos.

"That symbol," Pieter whispered. But in the still air of the shop carried the barely audible sound to the man's ears. The mans eyes snapped up and when he saw Pieter he jumped.

The man fumbled to put away the book as he shut it with a resounding boom. "You, frightened me." He stammered. "Although I am grateful for the company I'm not open, so I must ask you to leave."

He hurried round the counter and began to herd Pieter out the door. "Wait I wanted to ask you about it."

The man stopped and looked at him. He seemed to be considering the odds of Pieter turning him in. The he asked, "Why?" Pieter looked at the man and then realized that the apothecary would not be able to turn him in because Pieter had seen him reading the book with the symbol inside it. So he lifted his shirt and was rewarded with a gasp of awe from the apothecary.

"You have been blessed," he murmured. "You have the favor of the lord Tzeentch, you are chosen."

"What does that all mean?" Pieter asked. The man shuffled back around the counter and fetched the book he had been reading.

"This is one of a few tomes dedicated to the powerful gods of chaos. You bear the symbol of lord Tzeentch over your heart, you will be a great part of his plan for this world."

"I don't understand, how can this happen." Pieter was feeling sick, he was a servant of chaos, he would be hunted down and burned at the stake.

"I can see the changes have already taken to you." The man observed. Then he saw Pieter's shock and tried to correct himself. "Your eyes, have changed slightly, more like those of a creature of the night. Your whole body will change in due time to fit the great gods plans."

"What can I do? I'll be hunted as a monster, burned, destroyed completely." Pieter felt tears well up in his eyes. "I don't even know your name."

"I'm so sorry, how rude of me, my name is Otto." Otto offered his hand to Pieter who took it and they shook hands. Otto was much older and shorter than Pieter, his white hair came down to his shoulders and his gnarled hands were clasped together whenever he talked. "But belated introductions aside, you should stay here with me. It's unsafe for you to go to the tavern anymore, you could reveal anything there, and you'll look suspicious traveling back and forth from your home to my shop." Pieter was fine with living with Otto, but not being able to go to the tavern anymore was a massive strike to the face for him. "We must prepare to leave anyway." That caught Pieter off guard.

"What?" He yelled. "Leave the village! Are you insane? There's a tribe of beastmen out there!"

"Where else did you think we would go?" Pieter's jaw dropped.


	3. Chapter 3

Pieter hefted the bushel of herbs from the ground. Otto had had him collecting herbs for the past couple of weeks. It wasn't boring work, he had to pay attention to the herbs he picked. More than once Otto had provided him with some choice words for returning with herbs that had rot or other deformities.

He looked around the outskirts of the village. The knights had started a full on conflict with the beast men in the forest, and it was unsafe to go farther than the immediate clearing of the village. Otto had assured him that he had spent many a night conversing with the shaman of the tribe and no harm would befall them, but he was still uneasy.

As he looked at the trees his vision changed again. The shifts had become more frequent, and each time they grew longer. Otto said in time it would become permanent, and that he would see things beyond the mortal eye. In the trees he could see birds hiding in the branches, rabbits beneath bushes, and inhuman shapes crouched low to the ground with crude weapons in hand. Then all those things melted back into the shadow as his vision returned to normal.

He shuddered at the thought of the beast man that could still be in the trees, it's bow trained on his heart. At the thought he quickly backed into the village and hurried to Otto's. The villagers were looking thinner. The caravans had not come as the knight had said they would and the food stores were running low. Otto's shop was in front of him and he stepped inside.

Otto looked worried. He had gone to see the shaman the previous night, but it didn't look like he'd spent the day resting as he normally had.

"Are you all right?" Pieter asked.

"Not in the slightest." The old man answered. Pieter was worried as well now. "Oh, what have I gotten us into Pieter."

"What have you done Otto?" Pieter was almost screaming. The man looked at him, tears in his eyes.

"The beast men come tonight." Pieter dropped his basket. "They will mount an attack and kill all save you and I." Pieter looked at Otto in dumb shock. He'd never imagined such a thing possible. He never imagined the world outside the village in his life. He had friends here, he'd been born here, he'd bled here.

Night fell. Pieter and Otto waited in the shop. Otto held some of his less _common_ books to his chest. Pieter had nothing worth taking with him, Otto had provided him with a cloak from his younger days.

Hours past, the rest of the village was probably asleep. Pieter couldn't sleep, not that night. There wasn't a sound save the rattle of patrolling Knights and the crackle of the torches they carried. The forest made no sounds that night. Then the screams began.

A single one at first, then more and more. Fire could be heard roaring, spreading from home to home. Bestial war cries tore from the throats of things that weren't human. The fighting sounds grew more and more intense.

The door was kicked open. A man shaped creature with the head of a boar and the legs of a dog stood there. It squealed and started towards the pair, and stopped abruptly again with a sinister looking scimitar punched through it's chest. It was lifted off it's feet and shaken around until it flew from the sword point. A bigger beast man stood in it's place. This one possessed the head of a bull and the same hoofs. It bellowed at the corpse of it's fellow mutation then looked at Otto.

"We follow you." Otto said. Apparently the two knew each other. How, Pieter didn't know if he wanted to know. They followed the creature through the door. The village was alight, and the people were being slaughtered. The bar maid he stood up for looked at him in the eyes before she was cleaved in two by a goat headed creature.

"FOR SIGMAR!" The zealous war cry came from down the street. Two of the knights seemed to be surviving and taking more lives than Pieter thought possible. The two fought back to back, war hammers lashing out at any enemy that came too close. The bull headed creature gave a bellow and drew another scimitar from its waist. It gave them a few practice swipes and charged.

The knights saw him coming and looked at each other, and without hesitation charged at the monster together. The three met in a thunderous clash of steel. The first knight swung at the bull, but he dodged and trod on the shaft of the hammer below the head, pinning it to the ground. The huge creature then punched him in the nose, breaking it instantly, spraying blood, and knocking him to the ground. The knight left standing aimed a tremendous blow to the bull head on top of the mans body. But it ducked the swing and plunged head first at the knight, skewering him on a horn. The creature wrenched its head up, creating a huge gash.

The knight coughed blood and still holding his hammer mouthed, "Sigmar curse you." The bull bellowed and with a twin sweep of his scimitars cleaved the knights head from his shoulders. His neck fountained blood while his body still stood.

The bull head the turned to look at the knight that was only barely conscious on the ground. He hauled him up by the throat and drove a scimitar up into his stomach and up threw his ribcage and into his heart. He tossed the limp body away.

Pieter vomited upon the sight. Otto stood without speaking, unable to look at Pieter because of what he'd caused. The bull headed monster then returned and they left the burning village behind, for ever.


End file.
